2025 Mexican GP: Post Race Analysis

One of the most anticipated starts to a race this season and we weren't disappointed. 4 wide into turn one, cars bumping into each other, cars going off track. It was chaos! Yet everyone survived. Fantastic. The drivers and the teams certainly did their part to put on an exciting race. Formula 1's job is to give us the good coverage and correctly police the race. As usual, they failed. Plenty of amazing action was missed or left to the small split screen. Then the VSC at the end which robbed us all of a potential brilliant finish. Such a shame.

McLaren as dominant as ever with Lando Norris. Credit to him for being pretty much perfect all weekend. Huge advantage in quali, perfected the first 4 corners of the start of the race and actually made it through lap one in the lead, and then completely dominated the race without a single challenge. Can't help but find it strange how in recent races he has been good but still relatively similar in pace to his rivals, and yet a week later the car is half a second faster than everyone, including his teammate. Oscar struggles once again. Loses more points and relinquishes the championship lead. All season he was at the very least on par with Lando, and usually quicker in both quali and race pace. Suddenly he is absolutely no where. That's weird. Very weird. Especially since there have been no changes to the car.

Ferrari was competitive, relatively speaking. Charles scored another amazing podium. Unfortunately both drivers were told to LICO within a handful of laps so by lap 10 it was clear there was no hope for victory. As we all saw Charles got lucky with the VSC at the end as Max had an excellent chance to attempt the pass into T1 going into the final lap. Lewis Hamilton. Did he get screwed or not? He actually had a poor start sitting P3 behind Lando on the clean side of the track. Charles did a better job and got his car along side. A little rubbing, Charles gets a snap and has to go over the grass and comes out in front of Lewis. Given its lap 1 and everyone is scattered and going all over the place, it's pretty common and there is always some leniency and we fans want some good hard racing. As it was mentioned on the broadcast, any other team would likely call for a penalty but Ferrari wasn't going to try and penalize themselves. Leaving it as tough racing isn't a bad call. Lewis then gets in tough scrap with Max, same as we've seen before. Both pushing the other off the track. Lewis ends up out braking himself and goes off where he is supposed to use the escape road. It was absolutely impossible for him to make the turn for the escape road at those speeds and with that low of grip. But that is not what he was penalized for. He absolutely without question gained an advantage. A decent one too. At least 2 or 3 seconds. He made no attempt to slow down to nullify that advantage and thus he was rightly given a penalty. Is 10 seconds too much? Well if you're a driver and you're competitor got a 3 second advantage ahead of you, in clean air, would you be satisfied with a 5 second penalty? Probably not. Lewis probably could have had a good day, but that's racing.

Red Bull unexpectedly got another podium. Max was incredible as always, but loved the strategy call right from the beginning. Shame Max didn't get a chance to try a pass for P2, as that could be very critical in the championship. Yuki had the same strategy as Max but just didn't have the same pace, as we all can expect. P11 for him.

Haas scored a tremendous P4 with Ollie Bearman. The kid has been a Rockstar as of late and made a statement for Rookie of the Year. Had shocking pace, made great decisions, and even had some good clean racing against Max and came out ahead. What a fantastic job and kudos to the entire team. Ocon definitely overshadowed but he finished P9 and his points also help move Haas into 8th in the WCC.

Mercedes probably had faster car than they showed but were stuck in traffic all day. Kimi Antonelli was one that went off the track in turn 1 - lap 1, but he managed to find himself ahead of George and deserved to finish that way. George again the queen of complaining. Insufferable amount of bitching and whining saying he was so much faster. Eventually got his way and it made no difference. Despite the radio nonsense, George might have been right that the team should have let him go several laps earlier, but it's race. Pass him on track.

Sauber scored the final point with Bortoleto. Flew under the radar but it was a great drive by him. A bummer for Nico Hulkenberg who ran into PU issues on the formation lap and was forced to retire.

Williams had a poor showing. Sainz was for sure the better driver but his race was compromised with a 5 place grid penalty and then a rev limiter issue that gave two penalties. Strange they didn't retire the car after the second penalty since there was no hope for points. Failed to finish anyways. Albon was one of the drivers to start on Hard tires and that was a mistake. He also complained a lot and he didn't look all that fast on the soft tires.

RB maybe wasn't that quick today and perhaps got the strategy wrong too. Hadjar ran out of tires and fell out of the points. Lawson was first to retire due to damage collected on lap 1.

Aston Martin was dead slow. Stroll had a spin on lap one which we didn't get a replay of, he some how recovered nicely and was actually looking quick on his soft tires. Caught up to Alonso before he pitted, and even made a pass. Went on the mediums and dropped back down to the last of the cars ahead of the two tractors remaining. Alonso clearly had an issue, unfortunately I didn't hear what it was or the reason for his retirement.

Alpine. Well the car is pure trash so their drivers finished dead last.

Driver of the Day: Ollie Bearman. A very surprising P4, looked like a podium might have been possible. Made good passes, had great pace and didn't crack under all that pressure. Great job. Honorable mention to Lando Norris.

 

I just want to further address a couple of things as people are crying all over Social Media:

Did Charles deserve to get a penalty?: On lap 1 going into Turn 1, which like any race is chaotic but it's particularly crazy at Mexico with the powerful tow and drivers often deciding to cut the grass. Leclerc was wheel to wheel with Lewis through turn 1, Lewis gave Charles plenty of room to stay on track but Charles got a snap of oversteer which put him off the track and he aborted the corner and went through the grass. This was a smart choice as rejoining with 15 other cars flying by in the same real estate is a high potential for a crash. Charles ends up in the lead ahead of Norris but immediately and correctly slows down and lets Lando go by but stays ahead of Lewis Hamilton. It mentioned throughout the broadcast and in the post race skypad that if it were any other team, there would have been call for a penalty, but Ferrari is not going to investigate themselves. So yes Charles probably should have given the place back to Hamilton and a penalty should have been given IF the incident was asked to be reviewed. Given Charles proved to be faster than Lewis this was better for their race anyways, at least until Max showed up.

Max vs Lewis: These two race each other so poorly. Max dive bombs Lewis into turn 1. It's not the worst dive bomb we've ever seen but it's a dive bomb none the less. Max hits the apex ahead of Lewis and by definition of the horrible racing rules in F1, he is now entitled to the corner and he is allowed to drive Lewis off the track. IMO, this is trash racing but that's how it's written. We saw Russell attempt this same move in Austin but failed. In fact several drivers did this same move in Austin. Hamilton is still in the fight and gets back along side Max. Max leaves room on the inside but Lewis does NOT hit the apex. It may appear that Lewis does hit the apex because his left front tire clips the curbing, the truth is the normal racing line is to cut that curb as much as possible. So Lewis a good 3/4 of a car width off the true racing line while Max was arguably slightly ahead at the apex while on the outside. Lewis then drove Max off the track where is no run off and Max is forced to cut through the grass. Verstappen then rejoins about 1 car length ahead of Lewis, but going slower due to different acceleration rates. By the end of the straight Lewis has caught Verstappen and there is no definitive gain and the battle can continue into turn 4. Max Verstappen did not deserve a penalty. Sloppy hard racing from both. Max was within the rules in how they are written. If anyone was more outside the rules it was actually Lewis, but IMO he also did not deserve a penalty. It's a race so let them race.

Did Max deserve a penalty for lap 1?: Already talked about it but again Max was squeezed onto the rumble strips braking into T1 (while even or ahead of Charles and Hamilton) which caused the car to bottom out and that caused a lock up and Max's only option was to abort and go through the grass. Again this has been the chosen option for years. George Russell is correct that the circuit allows it, so they want to address it they need to make chances to the circuit. Most people do not realize how close Verstappen was to putting the car in the wall. Watch the cool down room and you can hear Charles Leclerc gasp watching Max drive the car through the grass. Great driving by Max. Continuing on, Verstappen rejoins the race in the lead. Max rightfully lets all Lando, Charles and Lewis go by. Max is now behind the cars he was even with when he was forced off, so no advantage gained. He stayed ahead of George who he was clearly ahead of when he went off as well. I get George's point of view as Max wasn't penalized by going off track, but George will fight harder for a competitor to get a penalty than he will to actually make a pass. George has been caught driving dirty just to try and force a penalty on his competitor, but I digress. The rules don't say a driver must be penalized by going off track, it just says they can't gain a lasting advantage. Max gave up any advantage gained exactly as he should. Verstappen did not deserve a penalty.

The VSC. Lap 1, Lawson gets in a collision with Sainz and there are bits of wing and carbon in the grass. The race director decides this needs to be cleaned up so when Lawson pits at he end of lap 1, he orders the marshals to retrieve the debris. Unknown where all the marshals are situated, but the ones on the inside of the track bolt out and cross the track clean up the mess. It wasn't until Lawson left the pits that a double yellow was thrown. Lawson flies through and a pretty good speed and nearly hits the marshals. Very scary and completely avoidable. We will talk more about this but this is a direct fault of both the race director and Lawson.

Fast forward to the end of the race, Sainz spits and drive his car about 50% behind the wall with the rear still visible to the racing cars though completely off line and not in the direction of the cars going by. Apparently Sainz car was smoking and the marshals went behind the car to extinguish any possible fire. A VSC was thrown for at least half a lap. Was the VSC required? IMO no it was not. It's already the slowest part of the track, the car and marshals were quite protected and in a very low risk position. A double waved yellow would have been suffice on entry and green flag on exit which would allow cars to resume racing exiting the stadium and last corner.

Going back to the double yellow procedures. Now days drivers do very very little to actually slow down under yellow or even double yellow flags. Even VSC's and SC they are not actually paying attention to the dangers, they are going through those zones as fast as they possibly can without getting a penalty. This is a problem seen not just in F1, but in every formula category. It's the reason we have seen horrific and even fatal crashes like Huberts at Spa or Bianchi's crash in Japan. Drivers will literally do a blip in the throttle just to show they "slowed down" when going through a yellow. It's ridiculous. Clearly the FIA need to force the drivers to slow down because they simply wont do it on their own. I see no reason at all why F1 can't have a system like they run at Le Mans. They issue a slow zone where the cars must drop to a set speed, maybe 60 kph and once through that section they can resume speed. Yes it likely would help some drivers and hurt others, but that's no different than a Safety Car or Red Flag. You win some you lose some. It's not something that should always be used, but the race director can add it to the procedures and use their discretion when to implement it.